Grade 8 ELA Module 2A, Unit 1, Lesson 8

This lesson launches students’ study of To Kill a Mockingbird. Students first encounter the novel through Story Impressions, a pre-reading activity in which students make predictions about a piece of literature through reading phrases from the novel or connected to the novel and then developing an “impression” of the text. The phrases included for this activity will familiarize students with setting and characters.
• To Kill a Mockingbird is a difficult text. In this lesson, students hear the first chapter read aloud as they follow along silently. This read-aloud gives students a chance to hear a fluent reader model this difficult text. In previous lessons, the read-aloud was “pure” and was read only to model fluency and help build understanding. For this read-aloud, continue to model fluent reading but also pause for comprehension checks to ensure students’ understanding as they begin this complex text.
• This lesson introduces students to a new structured notes routine that they will use throughout their study of the novel. Students used Structured Notes graphic organizers during Module 1 (while reading Inside Out & Back Again). But because the demands of To Kill a Mockingbird are different, the “structure” of the structured notes is also different here in Module 2A. With each reading assignment, students write the gist of the reading homework, answer a focus question, and attend to teacher selected vocabulary words. Key words for each chapter include academic words that serve a number of purposes. Most have prefixes, suffixes, or Latin and Greek roots. Many are adjectives that are used to describe setting or characters. Others are words
students should know to understand critical incidents in the novel.
• For readers who struggle, an optional set of supported structured notes is provided that includes chapter summaries and vocabulary definitions. Those summaries were retrieved from http://kindledminds.wikispaces.com/file/detail/To+Kill+a+Mockingbird+Cha....